The Elizabeth R Griffin Research Foundation (ERGF) is a US-based, 501c3 non-profit foundation established in 1999 by the family of Elizabeth “Beth” Griffin who died in 1997 as a result of an occupational exposure to B virus (Cercopithecine herpesvirus 1) that occurred while she was a non-human primate worker at Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta, GA. From this tragic incident, the Foundation set out with a “No more Beth Griffin tragedies” mission that was originally focused on occupational health and safety in the non-human primate research community.

Through collaborations with the Association of Primate Veterinarians, American College for Laboratory Animal Medicine, American Association for Laboratory Animal Science and Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, ERGF helped produce educational material and academic research to address these issues. A significant outcome is that almost all NHP workers in much of the world now carry “Beth Cards” that provide response instructions to both those exposed as well as medical care providers.

This post was originally published on the SIAPS website on January 30, 2017. The Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceuticals and Services (SIAPS) program is funded by USAID and implemented by MSH. This project works to assure the availability of quality pharmaceutical products and effective pharmaceutical services.

Over the past two decades, Ethiopia has improved its delivery of primary health care services and begun to make great progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals, particularly with regard to maternal, newborn, and child health and the prevention and control of HIV and tuberculosis. Yet pharmaceutical services—a patient's last point of care and one of the country's single largest health care expenses—remain inadequate. While some medicines in stock expire, other needed medicines are frequently unavailable, and patients are dissatisfied with the poor quality of service they receive.

For the fifth year in a row as part of MSH's annual storytelling contest, we invited staff to submit stories on how health systems are saving lives and improving the health of people around the world. MSH staff submitted dozens of stories from 16 projects in 12 countries.

In these 12 winning stories, meet health workers, community leaders, pharmacy managers, and patients working together toward healthier communities. These stories demonstrate the power of effective partnerships to help save lives.

Previous G-20 summits have addressed individual epidemics, but public health professionals and advocates are urging the forum to widen its lens to include health systems, which form the first line of defense in emergencies. They hope the effort might ultimately help advance universal health coverage, which campaigners argue would provide the best guard against future epidemics.

“The problem isn’t the outbreak, which is an inevitability that will happen,” said Frank Smith, who heads the No More Epidemics campaign. “The problem is the capacity of the system to identify the threat as a threat and to respond effectively.”

It's been called the pharmaceutical sector, a drug supply or management system or the medical products building block. By any name, the part of a health system that deals with ensuring access to essential medicines, vaccines and medical products and their correct use–we call it a pharmaceutical system at SIAPS–is critical. Yet despite much research in the field on improving its performance and considerable progress towards strengthening its components, there is no apparent consensus on what constitutes a pharmaceutical system in all of its complexity.

In addition, there's no clearly defined framework for measuring progress in pharmaceutical system strengthening (PSS). That means that countries and donors lack complete information for guiding their investments in PSS interventions, and the tools and agreed-on measures to evaluate them.

The July 2014 arrival of Ebola virus in Nigeria could have been yet another tragic chapter in the spread of a deadly wave of disease that swept across West Africa. Many in the global health world credit Nigeria’s ability to quickly set up a public health emergency operation center (PHEOC) as key to preventing the emergence of Ebola virus across the country. The Nigeria public health emergency operation center effectively mobilized the expertise, infrastructure, and partner organizations from its polio eradication campaign to prevent the emergence of Ebola. Below I offer some resources for those interested in public health emergency operation centers as a front-line response to emerging infectious diseases.

On this day (December 12) in 2014, the global health community made a commitment to universal health coverage (UHC) throughout the world. Although progress has been made, more than one billion people still lack access to basic health care. Further, as The Lancet Commission report, Essential Medicines for Universal Health Coverage, said in November, most low-income countries lack structural access to even basic essential medicines.

Bridging this gap requires system-wide interventions, such as strengthening the role of government, better medicines regulation, promoting quality use, and more transparency and accountability. These activities can reap big benefits.

With a sound pharmaceutical system, “for US $1–2 per month, every person in low-income and middle-income countries can have access to a basket of about 200 essential medicines,” according to the report.

We all have an unprecedented opportunity to make universal health coverage a reality.

As a founding partner of the Universal Health Coverage Day (UHC Day) Coalition, Management Sciences for Health is joining forces with the global health community and urging everyone to take action toward universal health coverage on December 12.

UHC Day is founded on the idea that no one should go bankrupt when they get sick, that universal health coverage is a smart investment and an achievable goal everywhere, and that it underpins our collective security and prosperity.

A few weeks ago I visited a health center in Freetown, the main port city and commercial center in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The health center is one of few health facilities serving the city, located in an urban area that is home to an estimated 1 million people. The clinic offers free antenatal care during pregnancy as part of the government's commitment to ensuring health care reaches all citizens.

The risk of a woman dying during pregnancy has long been unacceptably high in Sierra Leone, a problem that only worsened when Ebola hit in 2014. According to the latest figures from 2015, Sierra Leone has the worst maternal mortality ratio in the world. It is estimated that the lifetime risk of death during pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 17. The burden of newborn deaths is also among the world’s highest, with a newborn mortality rate of 35 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2015.